[FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 7, 2013

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by PVCpirate

I think the plan is to make sure those teams have a regional that is accessible to them as a local event. I say this because in New England, we have several teams that have almost always come to New England regionals from the Albany, NY area. From discussion in another thread, I heard that these teams were not invited to join the district, but that an Albany regional has been confirmed for 2014.

It's tough because 20 has been competing in New England for 22 years- occasionally competing with NY teams (Finger Lakes '08, etc.), but now we can't.
Yes- there's going to be an Albany-area regional, but we won't be competing with most of our good friends from NE anymore, and we have to travel (actually even further than any NE regional we went to) to the Finger Lakes or somewhere else for our second competition.

Inter-district play can't come soon enough. I think it'll be interesting to see what happens when NY goes to districts (i.e. a bunch of districts on Long Island, one in Albany, and one or two in Rochester?)

What doesn't work well for NY is that teams aren't evenly spread across the state, they're tucked into little pockets. There are a TON of teams in the city and on Long Island, a large number near Rochester, and 10 or so in the capital regional near Albany. The rest of the state is sparsely populated with FIRST teams, those teams usually being near a college (i.e 229/4124, 639, etc.)
This spread of teams doesn't lend itself well toward district events.